Well last post was Weighty and Meaningful, and today's is decidedly short on any kind of serious import. It also contains mild spoilers for Thor: The Dark World, though nothing that isn't covered in the prologue section.

So, Malekith. I've read a number of reviews so far about Thor 2. I really enjoyed the film — and the final action sequence manages to be both nail-bitingly tense and utterly hilarious, without either aspect sabotaging the other. One thing that turns up in a number of reviews, for example Bob Chipman's here, is that the principal villain, Malekith, is just a bit of demon-kingery, intending to destroy the universe for no real reason other than to make the plot work — all bombast and no real sense. I'm not entirely sure why, but I feel the driving need to fight in the poor chap's corner. Malekith makes perfect sense, and his motives and actions are entirely humanly plausible, given the means at his disposal.

Basically, the backstory runs like this: in the beginning there was a universe of darkness and it was ruled over by the dark elves, Malekith's people. Then all this light and matter and crap started getting out of hand, and made stars and planets and the nine realms, and the dark elves decided they weren't having any of that. They got hold of a weapon that could, if used very precisely, destroy everything and return the universe to the dark state they remembered so fondly. There was a big war and they got a kicking. However, the weapon survived, and so did Malekith and a few of his lads, and now it's that festive time again and the dark elves have a very long naughty list.

I did rather like Malekith as a villain. Christopher Eccleston (under a ton of makeup) did a good job at giving him dignity and gravitas whilst not at any point detracting from the complete batsh*t insanity of the character. The critics I've come across are mostly, "Well, it's Loki's film", and, hey, well, Tom Hiddleston, right? However fter the general "bah!" reaction to Malekith, I got to thinking.

The thing that makes it all look like motiveless mad villainy is the weapon, the Ether. That gives Malekith's scheme its all-encompassing crazy scale. If he didn't have it, then probably he would be in a room somewhere under a blanket, lord of a dark domain the size of his bed. With the Ether, he can put the blanket over the universe and revert things back to the good old days. And that's the thing. Because there are a lot of human beings, often very highly-placed and powerful, who pine for the good old days — frequently good old days that never existed. If you went to someone whose star was on the wane, whose way of life is under threat because people who were once either absent, or at least decently under control, and gave him a device that would rid the world of everything that did not belong to that supposed golden age — consequence free — then I reckon they'd do it. Go to a modern Klansman and say, "push this button and turn the clock back to before the civil war", say. Go to a right wing politician of any nation and tell them they could undo all the changes that have happened since their nation's "glory days", whenever they were. They'd do it. No matter the cost in lives and lost progress, I reckon there are plenty of people who are playing nice right now, because they don't have the means to achieve their impossible ends. Give them that magic wand, and they'd wave it until it broke in half. Malekith is not a demon king, he's a human given the chance to achieve every grumbling conservative's dream, a return to Good Old Values. The only difference is that in his case it's a literal darkness.

OK, didn't come out quite as light as I was thinking. Next week — kittens!(1)

You make a decent enough point about Malekith's motivation. Certainly from that perspective it makes total sense and I won't argue. Still, for me, Malekith felt a little flat. Maybe that's because I'm used to him from the comics, where he's a lot more like Loki without all the sympathetic pathos. Yes, he wants to destroy the other realms, but he's also having fun doing it. I think that may be the problem. People can accept a lot from a character, even outlandish motivations like destroying the universe, as long as the person in question feels like they have more than a single note to them. I understand in the movie-verse why they wouldn't want him to step on the toes of Tom Hiddleston, although they really should have given him something, anything, other than his mission if they wanted the audience to find him interesting.

Addendum– Plus, in the comics, he spends a lot of his time working for Surtur, and if they'd done that, shown him to be working for a greater evil, I think that would have intrigued people more as well.

Greg, December 14th, 2013 at 11:06 am:

I want to stand here for the fact that, give Malekith as much as you want, and he had a lot of potential, what I don't like is they not only fail to clearly explain, but outright TELL you in the last act of the movie from both sides, that he wants nothing more than to destroy the Universe, which is unrealistic and bland character development. I spend a great deal of time in my mind justifying Malekith, basically what you guys are saying, that yes, he wants to go back to the glory days. In this way, he could probably be an excellent character, it has nothing to do for me of whether or not he has fun with it, it's his motivation. But you have to read between the lines and almost make it up in your head to bridge this glaring inconsistency with the movie. In the movie, they give him the feel that he is nothing but cliché evil, even though as an intelligent audience we justify his character with logic, they portray by dialogue of the characters and lack of explanatory scenes that he is a pure evil boring force, though he's probably not, they write him as that. Even in the first act, they tell you a story that you can justify him with, but They talk as if trying to give you the impression that he isn't deserving of that justification and reasoning.

Basically, I'm saying the movie felt like propaganda that Malekith is so bad and evil for no reason and that his opinion didn't matter, even though intelligent viewers would naturally be interested in the villain's opinion and want to know it and figure it out. Even if we succeed, the writing and directing of the movie was "You need to believe Malekith is evil, it doesn't matter what Malekith thinks otherwise. End of story." That's the weak point for me.

That's what prevents me from rating the movie from a 5/5 and instead rate it a 3/5 because it's so frustrating to me, and even then it's only because of Loki I rate it that high, no matter how humorous Darcy is or brave Thor is, and writing out Loki would make it a 1.5 for me. I don't care much about visuals in movies if the story and characters suck. The exception is some movies in the very early 70s and backwards are hard for me to watch without digitally remastering them, because they look so fuzzy. Late 70s I don't mind, I love John Travolta.